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she could see.
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Lyda decided to make the first move. She took a careful step forward, then another. She stopped. The
rat took a step toward her with its big hind legs. Lyda came closer. She raised her hand and very slowly
stretched it out toward the creature, even while thinking how horrible it looked. It touched her hand with
one of its skinny clawed digits, but Lyda sighed as she saw that the sharp claw retracted before it made
contact with her. A sign of friendship? She gave it the benefit of doubt when it unfolded the other four
digits, claws also retracted, and rubbed the tips of them across her open palm. Friendly? Yes, but was it
intelligent? The tool it was holding in its other hand resembled nothing she had ever seen before. It was
no help and might not even be a tool. She wondered if it could speak and decided to find out.
"Hello. My name is Lyda Brightner."
The thing made some unintelligible noises that might have been language, or might have been the
rumblings of its last meal being digested.
She pointed to her chest.  Lyda."
It raised its hand to its head.  Sgghghhhgff, it said, then it turned one of its eyes down to gaze at the
metallic looking object in its other hand. It made another noise as it held the object upright. A slender
knife blade extended and retracted back into the tool, then the creature attached it to the harness it was
wearing.
Lyda supposed he had told her the name of the knife tool it had been holding but she couldn't even come
close to pronouncing the noise it had made. She could see that language was going to be a problem, but
that could be worried about later. Right now, she wanted to get away from this area before another of
those giant cockroach things came along. She pointed toward the mushroom and shrub plain.
"Go, she said.
"Bggghehhff, it answered, but came with her, walking upright with a peculiar side to side wobble like a
woman with extremely wide hips.
Lyda tried to sense its thoughts like she could now do with humans, but if it had a mind, it was in park.
She gave up the attempt and concentrated on where they were going.
The mushroom looking growths had smaller clusters budding off at their bases, like piles of marbles
arranged around a baseball. As she and Shaguff, as she began calling her companion, penetrated deeper
into the plain, the growths became larger. Lyda could see to where they turned into an irregular brown
and red forest in the distance.
Lyda remained very alert, not wanting to be taken by surprise, but she was anyway. As they neared a
mushroom twice her height, it split open like an overripe melon and disgorged a cluster of knee high
organisms that looked like caterpillars and moved like inchworms. In perfect unison like a platoon of
soldiers at drill, they humped their way forward, coming directly toward them.
Lyda froze, not wanting to make any mistakes. Shaguff raised its tool as if brandishing a weapon. Lyda
frantically waved her hand, then pointed to the ground. It wavered, then lowered its arm. The inchworm
creatures stopped two feet from them, their movements still perfectly unified. All at the same time, they
reared up, raising half their length. Lyda shivered when she noticed the first third of their undercarriage
consisted of hundreds of tiny teeth, similar to the rasping maw of a sucker eel. When she and Shaguff
made no hostile moves, they all swiveled together and moved off at a right angle. She watched as they
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headed directly toward another giant mushroom and burrowed inside it from the base. The worms were
feeding on them.
Lyda felt a touch on her shoulder. She started and twisted her neck. Shaguff was touching her in a
gesture she didn't understand. Respect? Friendship? Disgust for not killing and eating the inchworms?
There was no way to tell for sure, but she thought it was trying to indicate to her that she had done the
right thing. She hoped so.
A terrified human scream came from somewhere ahead of them, sounding as if the person was about to
be torn to bits which might very well be the case here, Lyda thought. She broke into a run toward the
source of the sound, not waiting to see if Shaguff was coming with her.
Lyda came to an abrupt halt before a big grove of shrubs, all head high or above. A woman was darting
here and there among the trunks, trying to escape the clutches of what Lyda first took to be a spider
mech. Then she could make out that it was organic, a caricature of the earthly brown spider grown to
monstrous size.
The woman's screams never stopped, even as she ran. She made a turn at the edge of the grove,
intending to dart back into it for cover, when she saw Lyda. She changed her mind and ran toward her
like a soldier under an artillery barrage searching for a foxhole. Then she saw Shaguff and halted. The
screaming stopped but her eyes were crazed with fear. She looked over her shoulder and shrieked when
she saw how close the spider thing was. She looked back at Shaguff, then like a prisoner forced to
choose between death by hanging or a firing squad, decided that Shaguff was the lesser of two evils. She
came on.
"Stop! Lyda called to her.  Don't run, it might be friendly!"
The woman paid not the slightest heed. She galloped past them as if escaping from the Devil himself.
Lyda stood still as the spider approached. Once the woman was past them, it seemed to lose interest in
her, but now they were the focus of its attention. Lyda saw that it really didn't resemble a spider that
much, nor one of the alien spider mechs either. It had only four legs, with two other shorter appendages
which writhed like captured snakes but ended in a cluster of tiny tentacles she was sure could function as
efficiently as hands. It had no discernable head, but there was a maw in front guarded by mandibles that
moved in all directions. It must be able to see, Lyda thought, even though it had nothing resembling eyes.
The important thing was that it wasn't attacking. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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